Outside Ray has a few beers ready for me, next to a pink .22. The deck faces a backyard stretching until it drops over the horizon. He leads me to the beers and the guns at the end of the deck. He hands me a cold one and the pink .22. Another .22, black, is at his feet.

Ray tucks his gun into his armpit with one hand and grabs the beer with the other.

Though I’ve never fired a gun before, I nestle the butt along my shoulder, which feels wrong.

Ray loads the gun, and a slight aroma of gunpowder fills the air.

“Jesus, Ray,” I say. “You’re gonna piss off the entire neighborhood.”

He reloads and fires again. “It’s relaxing,” he says. He reloads.

Sighing, I load the pink .22 and follow suit. The slight recoil catches me off-guard, but I’m not shaken by it, although I expected to be. “Then tell me, why did you wake me up? Please say it’s not just so we can shoot in the dark.”

“Isn’t that what we always do?” he replies. And fires.

The whisper of his gun is followed by mine. “It’s gonna be one of those drunken, philosophical kind of nights, isn’t it? Mom used to love that about you, you know.”